Massey Harris 44K misfiring engine

A Friend is looking for help with this tractor ,can anyone come up with a suggestion to help ?

Donkeyhead
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Massey Harris 44K misfiring engine
« on: Today at 07:06:55 AM »
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I was given a non running Massey Harris 44K tractor a year ago and set about bringing her back to life, when I first got it running it had a misfire at idle and would oil the plugs so I started looking deeper and found the head warped, and the head gasket and manifold gaskets both burnt badly so they were replaced and the head reconditioned, plus new spark plugs, leads, contact points, condenser, coil and distributor cap, but still it would misfire and oil the plugs, so I pulled the pistons and replaced the rings at the time discovering the crankshaft bearings were failing so that led to a crankshaft grind and all new bearings and seals, from the front axle of the tractor to the rear wheels, it was just a typical flogged old farm tractor that all of a sudden started costing a lot more than it was worth, but my mate who owned had been killed in a farm accident so it was more a memorial to him and the money less important.

So here I am a year later and the rotten thing still has that misfire at all speeds UNLESS it has any sort of load on the engine so I'm hoping someone here with experience with this model tractor can tell me if this is normal because it is driving me nuts, I even had the distributor rebuilt recently with new bearings because there was quite a bit of slop in the shaft, but that has made no difference, compression at cranking is 70 pounds on all 4 cylinders, the engine fires up easily and pulls well, it's just not a smooth runner at any speed unless under load, I'm running it on regular unleaded petrol and the manifold damper is set for "Gas" though the baffle was pretty much rotted away, I've had the carbie apart 5 or 6 times double checking but can't see anything obvious.

I hope someone here with experience on the MH44K can enlighten me before I go completely nuts, I did discover my brand new condenser had failed so I switched back in the old one with much improvement but it is still not right.
Thanks
Mike

There is nothing like a old engine to cause hair loss and money, but they were designed to run on Kero after getting hot and maybe that's the answer because everything else has been done, Massey Harris might be able to help but I haven't notice him on here for a while
Colin

I'm going to hazard a guess here and say its because he's running a modern petrol in a very old kerosene engine. Kerosene engines are very low compression and are designed to start on petrol and, once warmed up, run on kerosene. Modern fuels are designed to ignite at higher temperatures, as a result of high air temperatures from high compression ratios, to prevent auto ignition. Perhaps, only when it is under load, is the engine scavenging enough to provide enough air to develop enough compression for the fuel to completely burn. Realistically, 70 PSI is not a lot of compression, I doubt a little Briggs flathead engine would be able to run with that.

In contrast, I had a TE-20 that I completely rebuilt but it would miss as soon as it was warm and wouldn't run under any load. A new carby and a rebuilt distributor still didn't fix it. Eventually, after seeing some tiny sparks in the distributor at night, we worked out that some of the original insulating washers, although they looked like brand new, had broken down to a point that they were conductive when they were warm. I couldn't buy new ones, so I made some out of a piece of circuit board. She never missed a beat after that.

I notice petrol motors all seem to back fire if they dont have enough back pressure on the exhaust side of things ???
I dont reckon modern fuels E 10 and the like make any difference at least I have never noticed any of the problems of rubber not lasting etc they seem to last pretty much the same as old petrol

I gather its back firing out the exhaust for this to happen I think it must have un burnt fuel leaving and the exhaust manifold is igniting it

If this is the case maybe the exhaust is flowing to quick and maybe reduce the exhaust valve clearance to slow the gasses speed but I have no idea and am just really stabbing in the dark or grab a couple of old mufflers off some cars and whack them on to see if it makes any difference

Paul

Mairjimmy wrote: There is nothing like a old engine to cause hair loss and money, but they were designed to run on Kero after getting hot and maybe that's the answer because everything else has been done, Massey Harris might be able to help but I haven't notice him on here for a while
Colin

I'm here I lost my password

New leads single core old style. silicon ones are crap
New plugs

Wait this is a misfire at all speeds I'd be looking at the valve clearances you want 15 thou on intake and 14 tho on exhaust

Set yer mixture screw to one and a half turns on the carb and the idle jet to one turn

Actually check the leads if they are new and they are silly one get rid of them . If I think of anything else I will let you know


Swishy I brought an ovlov for cartin the old gear around

Just reading a few bits and pieces on fuel requirements for some of these old kero jobs. Going by one bloke who wrote a piece about a Fordson Kero rail tractor, no matter what they put in it, couldn't get it to run "just right".

Now I know absolutely nothing about power kero fuelled engines, closest I have come is old Inter diesel dozers starting on petrol and once going, switching to diesel, entirely different animal. But I have often wondered just how these guys get around the fuel problem now that power kero seems to be no longer commercially available? According to a few different forums, seems to be people making a shandy of diesel/petrol-lighting kero/petrol- one bloke even suggested a 50/50 mix of lighting kero/mineral turpentine with a "dash" of hi octane unleaded to give it a "kick". What about old "oil" engines, stationary types, heavy oil engines? Although I do know one guy who used to "make his own fuel", used to get hold of marine 'bunker' fuel (lower or virtually no tax on it at the time), mix it with pump diesel 50/50. Didn't seem to hurt those old 220 and 250 Cummins, although used to belch a bit of black smoke. That came unstuck when a few unscrupulous servo owners were busted after a few modern diesel cars and SUV's had major hemorrhages.
But back to the power kero fuelled engines, and also those old stationary , heavy oil engines, what are you guys running them on? Heard a rumour that one bloke has even tried out-of-date avgas (used in helicopter application), would have thought the octane rating too high? Might be making a shandy out of it as well?
Dave

G'day Dave, I run a 50:50 mix of Avgas and ULP 95. The Avgas has lead in it and helps the fuel life as well as valve life. I also put fuel saver or Moreys in straight ULP 95 for some other uses.

I don't have a brew as a kerosene replacement, but would like to hear of any others use.

I also have two petrol tractors coughing back through the air cleaner and not running as sweetly as they should.
We've tried pretty much everything we can think of without success. Geoff

The old petrol kerosine engines will run fine on petrol so long as they are kept cool and the manifold heating flap is not stuck. My Wallis tractor has a vaporiser set up where by the exhaust gasses are directed through tubes like a steam engine boiler directly over the top of the carberator/inlet pathway. This set up was to heat the Kerro to vaporise it prior to combustion, now I've had the tractor running for up to 2 hrs and its run without problems it does flame through the exhaust but I think that is fairly normal as it is virtually straight out the ports what I did have to do however is drill out the shutter on the main exhaust to keep the heat out of the vaporiser also I tend to add 2 stroke oil to the fuel for top end lubrication and a nice smell. Going back to the original issue of the 44k I don't think the misfire is fuel related more ignition or valves possibly even carberator gasket . If these old tractors sit for a wile the gasket in the carby dries out and you get vacuum leaks that will cause a miss its a ten min job to make a new one and replace it a wheatbix box will do I had to do it recently on my 55k after it sat for a few months with no fuel in it. It would start but would need choke and would miss bad . This tractor usually starts first or second pull and has an incredibly smooth idle and it this vidieo you can hear it misfiring when it is running, so I would replace the carb gasket. Next is the plug leads modern silicone leads just won't work you need old fashioned single core leads. With silicon leads they will misfire due to the spark breaking down I don't know why but I had to replace the new silicone leads I put on my 44k with single core ones due to this problem, and finally valve lash going off the book I have for my Wallis the valves should be set at 40thou clearnce. And that's what I set them to when I first got it running and this was the result not bad for 90 + year old but not quite right ( the times when it almost dies are due to the advance and retard leaver moving and retarding the spark to much I've since fixed this ) so I adjusted the valves down to 15 and 14 thou respectively quite a big adjustment eh and in doing so we end up with this much better it still flames out the exhaust occasionally but look at the exhaust design you can see why. Try the things I have mentioned above and let us know how you get on.

There are quite a few different Power Kerosene recipies to be found. A few of them can be found at www.steamengine.com.au

re fuel...this is the info I have gained...
Regards. Rod.

FUEL.
On this (low grade fuel model) there is a small auxiliary tank for gasoline which is used for starting and warming up the engine. The main fuel tank is used for the heavier fuel (power kerosene).
Do not leave both shutoff valves open at the same time or the fuels will mix.
Tractor Vaporising Oil (TVO) is an internal combustion engine fuel produced from paraffin (kerosene) that was commonly used after the Second World War for tractors in the UK and Australia until diesel engines became commonplace. In Australia it was known as power kerosene.
Note: Kerosene (Australia) or Kerosine (United States)
As a substitute for petrol, TVO was developed. Paraffin (kerosene) was commonly used as a domestic heating fuel and was un-taxed. Paraffin has an octane rating of zero and would damage a engine built for petrol. The manufacture of paraffin involves the removal of aromatic hydrocarbons from what is now sold as heating oil. These aromatics have an octane rating, so adding some of that otherwise waste product material back in a controlled manner into paraffin gave TVO. The resulting octane rating of TVO was somewhere between 55 and 70.

In practice TVO had most of the properties of paraffin including the need for heating to encourage vapourisation. As a result the exhaust and inlet manifolds were adapted so that more heat form the first warmed the latter. To get the tractor to start from cold a second small fuel tank was added that contained petrol. The tractor was started on the (expensive) petrol then once the engine was warm, the fuel supply switched over to TVO. So long as the engine was working hard (eg on the land, ploughing, pulling a load) the TVO would burn well. Under light conditions (travelling unloaded on the highway), the engine was better on petrol.
From lubeline@exxonmobil.com
Thankyou for your enquiry .We no longer market Power Kerosine,but an alternative is to blend a 50/50 mix of Home kerosine with mineral turpentine . This will give you a fuel which has the performance similar to Power Kerosine . If I can help further ,please give me a call on free call number 1800 033 863 between 830 am and 430 pm Monday to Friday kind regards Ken Brens